EPL Ivan Toney

This looks like the footballing equivalent of bodyline in cricket. There is nothing in the rules to prevent what Toney did. The rules state "All free kicks are taken from the place where the offence occurred", but no one is going to quibble the ball being move half a metre to the left or right prior to the wall being lined up. If it's moved too far forward, then there's an issue, but a little bit to the side is usually fine, unless you completely take the P**s!

It's not the same as diving or deliberate handball, as they are actual breaches of the rules, both punishable by yellow cards if the ref sees it. If Toney moved picked up the ball and placed it 50cm to the right of where the offence took place BEFORE the wall was being lined up, nobody would have cared or even noticed for that matter.

The issue is that Toney did this AFTER the goalkeeper had lined up the wall, rendering the five man wall useless. That to me goes against the spirit of the game, but then again football doesn't have the same level of honour as cricket (Australian cricket team excepted :) )

Maybe the answer is for FIFA to amend the rules so that once the ball has been spotted, you cannot move it without the referee's permission, and it is the referee's assistant's role to keep an eye on it while the ref sorts the wall out.

Interestingly Messi has also done something similar, but he gets lauded as 'a genius' for it.

 
To me the dirty tricks of the trade are all part of what makes football such a brilliant sport for the spectator and what goes around comes around. All clubs hate players of other sides that do these things but we’ve also all had players who did it for us and achieved hero status. I personally don’t get the same enjoyment from other sports where it’s all very sterile. The emotion of being wronged at times is all part of it, hence why I was never on the pro side of VAR outside of offside and even that can’t be made in to an exact science. The unpredictability of it didn’t put any of us off in years gone by.

Rugby is similar, only with better officiating. Players tow the line throughout the game, they just don’t get away with quite as much as the referees are impressively consistent. I have no issue with players exploiting the rules to gain advantage, I only wish we had more players recently that had that kind of lateral thinking.
 
Pretty similar to diving really. It's cheating but if referees aren't going to clamp down on it players will use it to their advantage.

A very slight touch isn't enough to drop to the floor, but VAR will ignore that and give the penalty anyway, it's poor sportsmanship and cheating but also clever tactics to gain an advantage under the circumstances.

Moving the ball and foam from where the referee has asked it to be taken is cheating, but VAR will give the goal anyway. So once again it's poor sportsmanship and cheating but also clever to get an advantage on the free kick.

As usual, VAR was brought in to make the game fairer and eliminate these things but it makes no difference. It's still humans in the VAR room making subjective decisions and missing things.
 
I’m not so sure that it’s different to all the free kicks elsewhere on the pitch that don’t have shaving foam, and 3 or 4 players take it in turns to gradually re-place the ball before one of them kicks it. They usually end up many meters away from the place of the foul or the place where the ref waves his hands at to indicate location. No one gets up in arms that players are cheating then!
 
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